Abrupt change of the mid-summer climate in central east China by the influence of atmospheric pollution

Abstract

Following the great flooding of summer 1998, the mid-lower Yangtze Basin further suffered from another large flooding in summer 1999. Successive droughts through 3 recent summers (1997–1999) appeared in north China in addition, leading to an abnormal summer climate pattern of “north drought with south flooding”. Such southward move of the summer monsoon rainy belt in east China started in the late 1970s–early 1980s. Its main cause may not be a purely natural climate change, but the acceleration of industrialization in east China could play a major role by emitting large volumes of SO 2, especially from the rapidly growing rural factories of east China. The annual release of SO 2 in China exceeded 20 Tg during 1992–1998, so dense sulfate aerosols covered the central east China which significantly reduced the sunlight. Although present estimates for the changes of clear sky global solar radiation may include some error, they show that the negative radiative forcing of sulfate aerosols in central east China by far exceeds the effect of greenhouse warming in summer. Hence the mid-summer monsoon rainy belt of east China has a trend moving southward in 21 recent years (1979–1999), showing the very sensitive characteristic of the summer monsoon system to the change in heat equilibrium of the land surface. The occurrence rate of summer climate pattern of “north drought with south flooding” in east China during 21 recent years is the largest since AD 950; such anomalous climate has brought large losses to China. The only possible way to reverse this southward trend of summer monsoon rainy belt is to significantly reduce air pollution by using more clean energy. Recently, the PRC has paid serious attention to this problem by adopting a series of countermeasures.